


Everyone's a Little Bit Miserable

by ceceliatarleton



Category: Kingdom Hearts (Video Games)
Genre: Gen, M/M, post kh3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-14
Updated: 2020-08-14
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:27:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25904317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ceceliatarleton/pseuds/ceceliatarleton
Summary: Vanitas tracks Sora down when he runs away upon learning Kairi's engaged, and sets him straight about a few things.
Relationships: Oh and mentions of past sokai duh, Riku/Vanitas (Kingdom Hearts), Sora & Vanitas (Kingdom Hearts), mentions of Kairi/Lea, mentions of a lot of ships actually, rattled off axel/roxas roxas/xion lea/isa too
Comments: 1
Kudos: 17





	Everyone's a Little Bit Miserable

**Author's Note:**

> This is a stand alone, but it started life as the beginning of a future chapter for my long neglected Post-KH3 WIP Sometimes the Lesson Is, before I decided Sora is not the running away type. So SPOILERS FOR SOMETIMES THE LESSON IS I guess. I slapped an ending on this, kinder than I'll be to a certain person in that story, and I actually had this published for a day or two before in...ah...April I think or possibly May before I deleted it for the spoiler reason since it was clearly related to Lesson and I hadn't revealed a few things there that I do here. HOWEVER, it's now back because I joined a KH rarepair discord, started talking about Vaniku...and the rest is history.

Vanitas’s eyes scanned the bar while the way he oh so casually leaned on the summoned Void Gear as if it were a walking stick and not a giant weapon materialized out of nothing a second before that was now cutting a divot into the floorboards kept the eyes of other patrons from scanning him right back in any way except wondering if they could take him in a fight if they were forced to. Vanitas would make it easy on them. They couldn’t.

It was hardly the nicest drinking establishment Vanitas had been in, but it was far from the worst he’d seen in the past year since it had been decided Roxas, Xion, and he should be considered over eighteen now and thus allowed to drink on most worlds. Nobody listened when Vanitas said he was as old as time and vice in the hearts of men. Ventus had made it worse by commiserating of all ridiculous things. After all, Aqua wouldn’t treat him as in his upper twenties or acknowledge his returning memories that he may even be older than that either. Vanitas had retaliated that Aqua didn’t even treat her little Venty-Wenty as over ten. That had shut the little Nightlight up. Vanitas had meant it to spur him into action. Oh well, you couldn’t win them all. 

Not that Vanitas had waited until he had blessings from the masters to drink like a good boy. Not that Roxas or Xion had either. Vanitas remembered vividly a month after he’d been brought back from the oblivion in darkness he’d wanted and Ventus had agreed to let him have before changing his mind, walking in on Roxas and Xion sitting crosslegged across from each other on Xion’s bedroom floor, passing a liquor bottle back and forth with an empty already discarded, and a finger being stabbed in his face paired with bleary blue eyes that couldn’t focus on him enough to intimidate, constantly blinking and making small, darting readjustments as if he were moving as he was warned, “You’re going to keep quiet ‘bout this, Darkness, or I’ll tell....Riku that….blergh.” The threat had cut off when Roxas had nearly heaved and then lost his train of thought trying to keep his tequila down. Vanitas hadn’t understood fully at the time, but when he did he had almost been proud of his pseudo-siblings--or at least grateful that the dark fira he’d shot at Roxas in instinctive retaliation for even considering throwing up on his feet hadn’t done too much damage. 

To the present point, Vanitas prided himself on being something of a connoisseur of iniquity, an avid and amused observer of the darker and more foolish breed of human behavior if not always a participant since he’d allowed the Guardians of Light to believe they had successfully domesticated him, so he knew what he was talking about when he decided that his prey had picked the most sickeningly average, clichéd, mundane stinkhole of a local tavern in the entirety of bottom of the barrel pubs in all worlds to crawl in and die. Typical. He resisted the urge to roll his eyes. 

Vanitas understood why this particular “icky job” couldn’t fall to Lea as the former nobody claimed too many of the worst jobs did, and he’d somehow known out of everyone else that was hunting the same target that he’d find them first, unencumbered by memories of so called far more likely spots to look that applied to a person that didn’t exist anymore. Vanitas was prepared. He just found the task was already trying his still underdeveloped and unevenly nurtured compassionate side, and he hadn’t even gotten to the part where he’d have to really exercise it yet.

It was only a cursory search before he found what he was looking for. Vanitas sighed and idly scratched the back of his head, dismissing Void Gear as he walked up to where Sora sat at the bar, oblivious to anything but the beer mug he cradled in his hands and stared into the depths of like it contained the answers to life, and sat down at the open space next to his near-double.

“Aww, Silly Sora,” he simpered mockingly, disappointed that Sora didn’t have a name as easy to twist into something to goad as Venty-Wenty or Baby Roxy. Xion liked Shi-shi and Shi-zilla, and called him Van-a-lan exclusively which he’d grown to not only accept but secretly enjoy, but that only made reverting back to Xion midconversation accomplish the goal of getting under her skin. 

“Saaaad Sack Silly Sora,” Vanitas drawled again, smirking, a tendril of mixed apprehension and excitement curling in his gut as he wondered if Sora, not knowing him the way the others that once shared Sora’s heart space now did and only having met him on the battlefield and at one awkward “family breakfast” --not to mention possibly being drunk--would take his ribbing too much to heart and try to swing at him. “Why the long face?” He blinked innocently and smiled widely, a wicked looking mirror of the face he saw most often in the pictures of Sora that half papered the walls of Riku’s room like a sick shrine. 

Sora didn’t so much as look up or twitch. A long pause followed and then a small whimper that seemed triggered by internal thought rather than Vanitas’s words or presence. Then Sora laid his face down on the bar next to his mug so suddenly Vanitas couldn’t be sure that he wasn’t witnessing Sora headbutting it and trying to knock himself out.

A great start, really, on both of their parts.

“You look like you could use another drink.” Vanitas said, carefully taking the sarcasm out of his voice this time. King Mickey was his model this time for tone and expression. The mouse was one of the best at doing the soft and sincere thing without making you want to hit him. “What are you drinking?” because there were dark, clinging dregs at the bottom of the beer mug that said either Sora wasn’t drinking beer or the cleanliness standards in this place were even worse than Vanitas had thought. “Can I get you another?”

“Moff loblet,” was what Vanitas heard Sora mumble, muffled by the counter. Odd name for a drink, but all worlds had their own signatures even though their grungy taverns all tended to look the same and the dark keyblade warrior had never been to this particular one. 

“Moff loblet it is,” Vanitas called, waving an arm for the bartender, a hulking specimen that looked like one of Vanitas’s own wild bruisers if he squinted, and holding up two fingers for a second before amending to three. That was called planning ahead.

Sora performed a full-body twitch that recalled a fish on dry land, turning his head toward Vanitas as he did and managing, impressively, not to fall off his barstool. “Hot chocolate,” the boy from Destiny Islands demanded more clearly.

Vanitas’s put-on smile froze and withered into disbelief. “What?” the deadpan monotone didn’t convey the distaste he felt flooding him. He knew what he heard, though he’d never bring himself to repeat it and he couldn’t believe it was anything but a joke, even considering who he was talking to.

“Rapunzel, Goofy, and I ordered it the first time we came here to the Snuggly Duckling. They made it special. It’s tradition. It tastes a lot better than the ale Donald and Eugene got," the punk whined.

Vanitas focused on breathing in through his nose and out through his mouth for a few measured seconds before he attempted a response and it was still a hissed order accompanied by a fist slammed on the bar next to Sora’s face. “I’m not filling this place with shoegazers born of secondhand embarrassment tonight, so you’re going to switch to a real drink now.” He couldn’t actually produce Unversed any longer, but that was a minor detail at the moment when it sounded better to talk as if he still could.

“You’re not whating the what what?” Sora asked, more alert and less pouting by the moment, though still fading out toward the end of the question as if talking were a great effort. 

Vanitas ignored him in favor of continuing to reprimand him. “Sit up straight. I can’t believe you’re not even decently drunk and you’re just sulking.”

“Kairi’s engaged.” Sora fixed Vanitas with a mournful expression that Vanitas supposed was supposed to break his heart or bore into his soul or whatever, He did feel a little acid reflux stirring. He supposed that was something.

“Yeah and?” Vanitas drew out the two short words, lifting a brow, as close as he would come to asking Sora to let it all out and tell him his feelings. 

Sora didn’t take the bait per say, only repeating the word, “Engaged!”

Vanitas waited as long as he could hold out for Sora to elaborate more, then finally started speaking again just to fill space. “Yeah, I hear you. Nineteen is way too young to end your life. Boytoy was pretty insecure though, something about thinking she’s still in love with her dead ex-boyfriend, if you can believe that,” Sora didn’t even crack a smile, tough crowd, “so she asked what she could do to prove him wrong. From what I gather, the whole proposal and out of sequence ring shopping after played out like a game of chicken. Real romantic. All for the best though, since the dead ex-boyfriend turned out to be not so dead after all. Fell out of the freaking sky the other day from what I hear. Maybe you can tell me that story. Can’t hurt for the two of us to start out on a more neutral topic.” Wheedling. Now Vanitas was wheedling. How the mighty fell.

Sora repaid Vanitas’s effort by face-planting back to the counter. In that case, if Sora wasn’t going to unburden his soul (thank Kingdom Hearts, because that would have probably been freaking awful) and he wasn’t even going to talk about something else, it was straight to advice time or at least a reality check. “Did you expect her to remain under glass, untouched by anyone else when you were gone three years?”

Sora let out a pained whimper and performed his fish flop move again, nearly knocking over the mugs of hot chocolate produced from who knew where the bartender had just set down between them . Compelling response.

“Maybe she should have put herself in a coma,” Vanitas continued to press, edge in his voice. “ She actually did that for the first year. I missed a lot of it. I was a remnant in the Realm of Darkness. Fun story I should tell you sometime. Venty-Wenty gets to play hero, Master Aqua gets to play judge, and Ter-Bear goes on a quest to make me a real boy. I was there when she woke up though. She had a pretty rough time…”

Sora cut him off, sounding bitter, “And I’m having a pretty rough time now. So why don’t you leave me alone? What are you doing here anyway?” Sora’s head snapped up again and blue eyes met yellow with a glare that gave off the impression Sora had just that moment noticed who was sitting beside him. He sounded so revolted that the raven haired boy beside him was almost proud.

“I thought you could use a friend, Sora,” Vanitas chirped, sarcastic pep back in full force as he spoke in an approximation of the man in question’s own typical chipper tone, flashing a toothy grin after just for good measure. Maybe he didn’t need to worry about the compassion thing. He could follow the letter of this being nice thing and still have fun.

“Go play in a corridor of darkness without protective gear,” Sora spat, almost sounding like he meant it.

Vanitas chuckled, genuine and pleased, having been caught off-guard. “You sound like Roxas. Man, Riku sure does remember you through love goggles. He talks about you like an angel purer than the princesses of heart who could hold no bad feeling.” There was that acid reflux again. It was pretty bad stuff, constricting around his heart and shit.

“Riku,” Sora sighed the name mournfully, and Vanitas felt his jaw clench. He could grant Sora the right to be all maudlin about Kairi, but what right did he have to whine Riku’s name when Sora mentioning it at all probably acted like a dog whistle and summoned him to his side like a loyal pet? “Tell him I’m sorry I took his gummi ship without asking and left so abruptly. I just needed time to think.”

“Tell him yourself. I’m not going back without you. Riku would kill me.” Actually, Riku probably wouldn’t even be angry, but he would be disappointed, and then he’d say he hadn’t expected much and get sad, which was worse. Though Vanitas wasn’t going to be doing anything as distasteful to him as admitting it, he wouldn’t do anything to upset Riku, not on purpose anyway.

Great. He must have sounded softer than he wanted to, because now Sora was staring not glaring, looking part puzzled and part sympathetic. Vanitas wanted none of that. Not from Sora, everyone’s golden boy. Vanitas leveled a glower of his own, not his most intimidating but something to at least shut Sora up before he said anything, and huffed a deflection, “They would all kill me. Half of them are still looking for an excuse. So you’re coming back.”

“Not with you,” Sora grumbled like a child. That was insulting. They didn’t even really know each other, and Vanitas had more reason to dislike Sora than the opposite, Vanitas having tried to take Sora’s head off with a keyblade in the graveyard years ago notwithstanding.

“Fine. Great. I wasn’t looking forward to a long gummi trip with you since you proved such glowing company. You can go back with one of the others. Chip and Dale tracked your little joyride for us as far as they could. Riku, Roxas, Xion, Kairi, Ventus, and Terra, Donald, and Goofy are all here on planet looking for you. Aqua and Naminé are back at the Land of Departure in case you come back. We only have so much time before someone you don’t want to see walks in because they finally clued in that the best thing for a broken heart is a stiff drink.”

Sora returned to what Vanitas was quickly gathering might be his favorite pastime, whine and flop. “Everyone’s here?”

Sharp one, that Sora. No wonder Riku and Kairi both were still in love with him.

“Yep, so let’s fast track the stages of grief to acceptance so you’re ready to make nice. Time to think is over.” Vanitas slapped Sora on the back.

“Why are you here?” Sora repeated his question from earlier, leaving his head resting on the bartop this time. He continued before Vanitas had a chance to say something biting. “I mean, why didn’t you leave it to my real friends?”

It was Vanitas’s turn to go silent for too long. Riku had asked. Vanitas wasn’t going to say that though. He ended up being just as honest in the answer he did give though. “I wanted a chance to talk to you away from everyone else fawning over you and see what all the fuss was about.”

“Fawning? Fuss? They  _ gave up on me _ .  _ Kairi _ gave up on me.”

“Shut up before I punch you in the face. I can’t tell you how many searches for you I’ve witnessed or been dragged in over the past few years and even when they had to face that there was nothing they could do, I had to deal with every person in my life looking at me wishing they are looking at you  _ every day _ . The people who showed me I had become a person separate from the Darkness that bore me, the first people to ever care about me and not just what power I might have. And I have to wonder if they thought I was worth saving, whether they got to know and want and care about me at all or if it’s just nostalgia and guilt because I have  _ your _ dumb facial features!” He was breathing hard by the end. Having the Unversed stripped from him when the Blue Fairy had fully separated him from Darkness and made him a normal human had only made it harder to process emotions. He just had to  _ keep _ them, and  _ deal _ with them. He could only set them on others if he talked about them, and he rarely got the satisfaction of having them hurt others. 

Several expressions flickered over Sora’s face in quick succession as it morphed from resentful to slack surprise to guilt and pity, to a profound sadness, and then, surprisingly, landed on a superior smirk which showed Vanitas wasn’t the only one who could impersonate his look-alike. It wasn’t quite convincing, but it wasn’t bad for a first attempt. “Well, I don’t feel so pathetic with my whining anymore.”

Maybe Sora wasn’t such an idiot after all. He was gambling assuming he wouldn’t get his teeth knocked out, and he was kind of transparent, but it showed surprising insight into what Vanitas would actually find more comforting than an attempt to comfort him, trying to stave off the tidal wave of embarrassment and true anger that would have inevitably followed Vanitas turning vulnerable by brushing it aside and letting Vanitas ignore it too with a growled, “Have you tried shutting the fuck up? It’s like talking but you live to see your friends again.”

“You seemed like you wanted me to talk before.”

“Nah, I thought better of it,” Vanitas shrugged. “Sit and listen. We all want what we don’t have, and we just have to deal with it. That’s being alive. You want Kairi. If Kairi hadn’t moved on, you would be wishing she hadn’t wasted away pining and thinking she was kind of pale for it.”

Sora looked like he wanted to interject, probably to make some kind of declaration of his and Kairi’s true love so Vanitas didn’t let him, not leaving a pause longer than a breath, and talking louder. “Guess what? Kairi probably wants you too still, but only the you she has in her head. Not even the you that left. And you don’t want any version of her that still exists. You think you know each other because you grew up together, but you’ve done more growing up apart. You haven’t really spent time together since you were...what...fourteen? Do you even remember who you were before the Heartless? Do you  _ want _ to be that kid? Maybe sometimes you think you do, but you really don’t, just like I sure as hell don’t want to be  _ you _ . You and she both want a dream and you want what you can’t have like every other person in the universe. 

“Nobody is ever truly happy. I know. I used to  _ feel _ it all the time all around me.” He closed his eyes for a second, remembering the pain of the world. His throat was dry but he couldn’t stop now. “And I’ve been through it before recently in my human life too. Listen to this. Xion wanted Roxas who wanted Axel who wanted to be called Lea and wanted Isa who wanted to be Subject X’s hero. Then, surprise, Isa just so suddenly realized one day that all he ever wanted was Lea who by then wanted Roxas because everyone wasn’t constantly yelling Roxas was jailbait anymore or something like that, but Roxas was dating Hayner and Kairi decided to fall on Lea’s dick and everyone was jealous and unhappy and Roxas and Xion kept making the dire, dire mistake of assuming I gave a shit and would listen to them talk for hours upon hours about it.” He did listen and he may have bought some ice cream a few days, but that wasn’t something Sora needed to know. “That shit is what you missed while you were away and it goes on all over.”

“Is Kairi not happy?” Sora asked after a pause, proving he’d taken only want he wanted to from Vanitas’s rant, and sounding hopeful, which was kind of selfish from someone who would surely claim seeing Kairi happy even if it wasn’t with him was his greatest desire. Good to see Sora was as self-motivated as anyone else.

“Not now.” Vanitas said that much flippantly, but then shifted to weighing words carefully and speaking slowly. He didn’t want to lead Sora wrong. It wasn’t that he cared, per say, he’d swear he didn’t, but if Sora went after Kairi too hard and she rejected him like the good girl she was since she was engaged, then where would Sora turn for comfort? His best friend, Riku. You had to look at the cause and effect. “I don’t know about before. We don’t talk like that. I do know she desperately wanted someone that didn’t just look at her and see her in terms of you.” That, they had talked about, latching on to someone who’d understand. “She found a guy like that and he happens to have a lot in common with her, and know her. They seem to have fun together. I don’t know. That’s not the fucking point.” It was an uncomfortable topic.

“What is the point then? If I knew she was happier than I could make her maybe…” Sora was whining again, and pretending he wanted Kairi happy, not just wanted her.

“Nobody’s happy.  _ That’s _ the point. Life is misery and longing. Everyone’s a little bit miserable, so find a balance you can live with, pretend, and let others pretend they’re fulfilled.”

“That’s dark,” Sora slumped again.

“I still come from Darkness,” Vanitas pointed out unapologetically.

Sora got quiet again. Then, “I’m going to get an ale now.”

“You should get something stronger,” Vanitas advised, “but, alright, I can work with baby steps.”

They got two dark brews from the bartender, and the silence continued, shifting to almost companionable Vanitas would dare say.

“Riku doesn’t just see Kairi just as an extension of me,” Sora chose the oddest point to harp on. “They grew up together too.”

“Maybe, but Riku sees you everywhere. He never gave up on you being alive.” Vanitas stared into the depths of his ale as if it contained hidden secrets, not realizing it was the exact same expression Sora had been wearing when he walked in. He couldn’t look at Sora just then. Sora had to know, didn’t he, what wasn’t included in Vanitas’s rant about wanting what you can’t have? Maybe he didn't. Maybe he was just that obtuse. Maybe it had needed to be spelled out, all sides of it. It certainly would have driven home the point about ignoring that empty longing was all life gave you and pretending to be happy. He couldn’t quite bring himself to say it though.

Second drinks--the long forgotten untouched hot chocolates still didn’t count-- were ordered. 

“Are you sure you can drive a gummi ship after this?” Sora fretted.

“Through a storm of Heartless and a meteor shower, but what makes you think I’m not dragging your ass through a portal of darkness?”

“I could fly circles around you," Sora replied inconsequentially.

“We’ll try it sometime.”

A third drink might have made them actual friends, but Riku found them. Took him long enough.

As expected, the moment he walked through the door, Vanitas noticed him. He stood out, silver hair and aquamarine eyes and all, and Vanitas had heard the door. It wasn’t like their souls were in tune. As expected, while Vanitas waved him over, Riku’s eyes fixed on Sora instead and his relieved grin could have felled worlds. As expected, Sora lit up seeing Riku. Riku stood on the far side of Sora instead of between the two stools. Sora turned fully to Riku, literally giving Vanitas the cold shoulder. The old friends had eyes only for each other, talking, laughing, Sora making his panicked fleeing sound like some wacky adventure. Riku’s eyes spelled adoration. They started drinking the cold hot chocolate.

Burning down the bar would probably be bad form, and Vanitas didn’t have the energy for it anyway. He was more resigned than anything. 

Thank you Riku and Sora for proving a point.

Then, something odd happened. Riku caught Vanitas’s eyes over top of Sora’s head and his eyes somehow softened further, smile crinkles at the edges becoming less but the adoring look becoming...more. There had to be a word for it.

“Thank you,” Riku mouthed.

Vanitas shrugged and finished his drink. That made it make sense. It came back to Sora. Riku was just grateful he tracked down his love.

The look didn’t go away though, and, actually,  _ that _ was the name for the look. Love. Maybe a little longing. Wasn’t that odd?

“Can’t wait to get you home.” Riku mouthed another phrase, not paying attention as Sora continued whatever story he was telling.

You.  _ Home. _ Vanitas knew the individual words, but they took a moment to sink in.

Maybe life wasn’t just empty longing after all. He hated to be wrong, but there were exceptions.


End file.
